Passions around coming displacement of low-income residents were high at a hearing about a proposed change in plans for the coming FC Cincinnati stadium in the West End.
The hearing hosted by Cincinnati planning department staff was ostensibly a public input session for an arcane part of the planning process: an approval of zoning changes related to the team’s plans for its $250 million stadium.
But the blueprints and renderings presented took a back seat to concerns from residents who have been told by the team and their former landlord, Fred Berger, that they must move to make way for the sports facility.
More than a dozen face relocation, including a 99-year-old woman named Mary Frances Page who has lived in her apartment for at least 15 years.
“You don’t care about us,” 16-year-old Amier Lane, one resident who is being displaced, told team representatives and members of the Cincinnati Planning Department’s staff as he shook his head in frustration. “I just want you guys to honestly listen.”
The team wants to expand their development plan into land north of its original designs in order to build parking and a public pavilion.
Two residential buildings — 421 and 423 Wade St. — as well as a Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall sat within the team’s proposed new boundaries, however. The team says it has since removed 421 from its zoning application to give residents more time to relocate.
If FC Cincinnati wants to include 421 Wade in future development plans, it will need to once again go before the planning commission and council, planning staff said at the meeting.
Two other properties on Wade Street owned by the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority are also excluded from the plan expansion.
It isn’t clear when residents left 423 Wade St., but there are still people living in 421 — formerly owned by Berger — and in another building at 1559 Central Ave. purchased by the team from Berger earlier this year. In February, more than a dozen residents in both buildings were given letters telling them to be out by April 30.
The building at 1559 Central Ave. is not in the team’s amended plan, and it is unclear why residents must move.
“When Fred Berger approached FC Cincinnati about selling the two buildings, the transaction was made and then he put forth the 70-day notices that people had to move out,” FC Cincinnati Community Development Director Mark Mallory said. “That’s basically where we are. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
The relocations don’t sit well with many West End residents, who were told no one would be displaced by the coming stadium as the team eyed the West End as its future location.
“Let me stress this: We’re not taking anyone’s homes,” FC Cincinnati President and General Manager Jeff Berding said in January 2018. “We’re going to increase home ownership. We’re going to increase the number of people living in a neighborhood. The notion that we’re somehow going to try to buy people’s homes out, move people out of the neighborhood, that’s just false. That’s just made up.”
Now, as that scenario unfolds, some are taking the team to task.
“I’ve been living in the West End for 80 years,” said Faye Atkinson, who lives on Baymiller Street, to Mallory. “I’ve known Mark since he was a child. You’re cheating your people in the West End.”
Mallory, Cincinnati’s previous mayor, grew up in the West End. He says the team is working with residents of the buildings they purchased through former owner Berger, who is an approved Section 8 landlord.
“Fred Berger has been working on behalf of FC Cincinnati,” Mallory said. “He has contacted some tenants and attempted to contact other tenants. My understanding is some have found a new place to go and others have not. For those who have not, we are obviously offering flexibility on a timeline to ensure that they can find new places. No one is going to be put out of either of those properties without having another place to go.”
The residents, however, say otherwise. One resident of a building the team purchased yelled “you lie” as Mallory spoke.
Residents organized by the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition point to a letter they say they sent via certified mail to Berding asking for an in-person meeting. Mallory says the team is more than willing to have a meeting, but it must be organized through Berger.
The meeting was a replay of the often arduous process that brought the stadium to the neighborhood. Last year, the West End Community Council’s general body voted decisively against the stadium locating in the West End. But the community council’s executive board supported the stadium, and in the end, a small group of representatives from the neighborhood negotiated with the team for a multi-million-dollar community benefits agreement. That agreement includes a $100,000 housing study that, in its preliminary form, shows as many as 1,500 renters and 350 homeowners face risk of displacement as the stadium comes.
The historically African-American West End has a median household income of just $13,000 a year. Eighty-five percent of its more than 6,000 residents rent their homes instead of owning them.
The concerns about displacement also resonate with the wider issue of affordable housing in Cincinnati, which faces a roughly 30,000-unit gap in housing affordable to its lowest income residents.
Cincinnati City Council member Jeff Pastor, a key architect of the deal between the city, the team and the small group of neighborhood representatives, showed up at the meeting last night. He said he was there to “face the damn music” and to say the city would try to help with concerns about affordable housing and displacement. Pastor says he believes the stadium can still be an overall positive force in the community.
Cincinnati Planning Department staff were also at the hearing, taking notes for a report they will present to the Cincinnati Planning Commission. Another hearing in Over-the-Rhine will take place April 30. The planning commission is set to vote on the team’s amended zoning change requests and its overall design May 10. Should they approve the plan, Cincinnati City Council must also give its ok.
Upon learning about the zoning amendment April 10, CityBeat reached out to the eight council members who could eventually vote on the deal (Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman, also on the planning commission, will not vote in either body because a contractor for the stadium, Jostin Construction, is owned by a family member).
Council members David Mann and P.G. Sittenfeld last week indicated they were working on legislation to address potential displacement. The two will hold a meeting today at 1:45 P.M. to discuss that effort with reporters. Other council members did not reply, said they needed more time to become familiar with the zoning amendment request or said they hoped an agreement could be struck before the vote.
This article appears in Apr 17-24, 2019.
